Teens don’t read anymore.

Anyhow, that’s what I keep hearing.

And then . . .

Yesterday, I took my teenage daughter and her friend to the North Texas Teen Book Festival in Irving, Texas. On a Saturday. That began at 8:00 A.M. If you know anything about teens, you know that the day and hour matter. Truly.

We were a small group of 3 in a sea of what I hear was over 7,000 people waiting to meet authors and talk about books. When I went outside to eat lunch around Noon there was still a long line of buses pulling up and letting off large groups of teens and their adult chaperones for the festival.

When I went into the book selling area there were hoards of teens carrying around baskets full of books that they were buying.

As I sat in sessions where teens asked intelligent questions about books that they had obviously read, others were being introduced to new books by new authors, taking notes about what they wanted to read next.

I think I won’t be too worried about the demise of teens, because I just spent 8 hours on a Saturday that began early in the morning with thousand of teens who swarmed to meet authors of books they loved in matching book club t-shirts and listened to them ask intelligent questions about books they had not only read but loved and were eager to discuss.

But teens don’t read anymore. Libraries are dying. Nobody reads physical books because they all use e-readers.

Or maybe not.